How Nantucket Came to Be the Whaling Capital of the World

smithsonianmag.com

18 points·pepys··8 comments

Obligatory Moby Dick chapter:

http://americanliterature.com/author/herman-melville/book/mo...

"With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales."

If you're interested in more depth, a great book to read is Away Off Shore, written by Nathaniel Philbrick. It's a very well written and readable history of Nantucket.

also, Philbrick's "In the heart of the sea", about to be released as a movie on Dec 11, is an excellent read and an amazing story

In case were not aware of the movie release after reading the epigraph of the linked article?

precisely

He also wrote In The Heart of the Sea which is an incredible read about an ill fated crew sailing out of Nantucket.

I think you will find that one of the nice things about HN is that most people have read or skimmed the linked article before commenting. The book is explicitly mentioned in the second paragraph of the article and is alluded to in the epigraph of the article highlighting the upcoming release of the movie with the same title.

I once knew a man from Nantucket. The stories weren't true.

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